Smartphone sales plunged more than 20% in the first quarter due to the economic uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new figures released today by Gartner Inc.

The plunge was across the board, though some companies were hit harder than others. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. maintained its position as the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer in the quarter, shipping 55.3 million units, down 21.7% from the first quarter of 2019. Samsung’s market share dropped to 18.5% from 19.1% over the same period.

Huawei Electronics Co. Ltd. experienced the largest single decline among leading phone makers with 42.5 million shipments in the quarter, down 27.3% from a year ago. Huawei’s decline was not only COVID-19-related, since the company also faced declining sales after sanctions on its accessing U.S. technology, including a licensed version of Google LLC’s Android operating system.

“Huawei will have a challenging year,” said Anshul Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner. “It has developed the Huawei Mobile Service (HMS) ecosystem, but with the lack of popular Google apps and Google Play store, Huawei is unlikely to attract new smartphone buyers in international markets.”

Added to the mix is that Huawei is highly reliant on sales from mainland China and it was hit by the coronavirus pandemic first, with shutdowns and quarantines during the quarter.

Apple maintained its third-place spot for smartphone sales, shipping 40.9 million units in the quarter, down 8.2% year-over-year. “Apple had a strong start to the year thanks to its new product line up that saw strong momentum globally,” noted Annette Zimmerman, research vice president at Gartner. “If COVID-19 did not happen, the vendor would have likely seen its iPhone sales reached record level in the quarter.”

In fourth place, Xiaomi Inc. was the only company to increase sales in the quarter, up 1.4%, to 27.8 million. Rounding out the top five, Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp. Ltd. saw its sales drop 19.1%, to 23.9 million units. Phone manufacturers listed as “others” saw a drop of 24.2%, to 108.6 million units.

“The coronavirus pandemic caused the global smartphone market to experience its worst decline ever,” Gupta added. “Most of the leading Chinese manufacturers and Apple were severely impacted by the temporary closures of their factories in China and reduced consumer spending due to the global shelter-in-place.”

The report makes no predictions for the second quarter, but the figures are likely to be just as bad if not worse. While manufacturing has reopened in mainland China post COVID-19 with cities coming out of lockdown, much of the western world shut down through April and into May, with massive job losses. And just as the U.S. was coming to the end of COVID-19 restrictions, the country has now been wracked by protests, rioting and looting that will likely further dampen consumer sentiment.

Photo: TGspot/Wikimedia Commons